4 ms·

My biggest problem with Emacs today is responsiveness. This is partly due to lack of threading, partly due to slow execution of Elisp code, and partly due to po

My biggest problem with Emacs today is responsiveness. This is partly due to lack of threading, partly due to slow execution of Elisp code, and partly due to poor data structures/database use in the back end (e.g. for maintaining indexes). I have to throttle semantic analysis from CEDET just to have a usable system and I avoid other features because they just take too long to run. My Emacs session has been running for two weeks and I have 560 open buffers, which amounts to a memory usage of 620 MB. I don't think it's unreasonable for most every interactive operation to be instant. I don't blame Lisp for the slowness, except insofar as the language promotes the use of data structures like simple lists that eventually create bottlenecks, and that the Elisp implementation is not very fast compared to something like SBCL.

winestock 15y ago
Agreed on the responsiveness issue. You don't even have to open hundreds of buffers, either. Emacs has given me embarrassing pauses while auto-saving a text file only a few kilobytes in size. Emacs will also make the text flicker as it redisplays the buffer every few minutes.
- Lozzer 15y ago
  It's probably irrelevant, but maybe http://www.method-combination.net/blog/archives/2011/03/11/speeding-up-emacs-saves.html http://www.method-combination.net/blog/archives/2011/03/11/s... will help
  - winestock 15y ago
    Thank you, I'll try it.
technomancy 15y ago
I use Emacs all day every day and have never experienced anything like this. I suspect the problem is specific to CEDET.
- copper 15y ago
  It's what happens if you use cedet/ecb on lots of code. I like the code completion and other features they give me, but it is just too slow to keep on always.